VMware Unveils vStorage

At VMworld 2008, VMware, Inc. announced vStorage, a set of new technologies and interfaces to provide VMware customers the best total cost of ownership and manageability for the storage infrastructure in their virtual environment. vStorage combines new VMware technologies that maximize efficient use of storage by virtual machines with new vStorage APIs and the VMware Ready program to enable storage partners to integrate and optimize their products with the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS) from VMware that delivers the elastic, self-healing and self-managing datacenter. These interfaces and programs will be available to all storage partners, enabling customers to further simplify, optimize, and automate their computing infrastructure with a broad set of storage platforms.

"Storage is a critical building block in delivering the flexibility, speed, resiliency, and efficiency of the Virtual Datacenter OS," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions, VMware. "vStorage in combination with products from our storage partners automates handoffs between the VMware platform and the storage infrastructure, simplifies storage operations, and maximizes efficient use of customers’ storage infrastructure."

"Datacenter virtualization has been broadly adopted by Gartner clients to improve TCO and manageability of their IT infrastructure," said Dave Russell, vice president, storage technologies and strategies at Gartner. "To take full advantage of virtualization, customers require virtualization solutions that maximize the efficient use of their storage infrastructure while enabling seamless, intelligent integration between their storage and server virtualization infrastructure."

New Capabilities Deliver Deeper Integration with Storage Partner Functionality
vStorage enables intelligent integration of storage products within the Virtual Datacenter OS through the new vStorage APIs.

• vStorage APIs deliver tight integration of advanced capabilities from storage partners with the Virtual Datacenter OS from VMware. vStorage APIs for array integration will enable customers to leverage array-based capabilities, such as snapshots, provisioning, replication and restore, directly with individual virtual machines in conjunction with the clustering and pooling capabilities of VMware Infrastructure. vStorage APIs for multi-pathing will provide customers the ability to integrate advanced load balancing capabilities provided by leading partners’ multi-pathing software with their virtual environment.
• Storage virtual appliances deliver key storage functions from storage partners in the form of VMware Ready virtual appliances. Small environments that could not previously utilize such storage functions, including small office and SMB, can use storage virtual appliances to obtain the benefits of technologies such as shared storage, data protection, data deduplication and others.

New Capabilities to Optimize Storage Efficiency
vStorage maximizes the efficient use of customers’ storage infrastructure with the following new capabilities:

• vStorage Thin Provisioning improves the efficiency of storage allocation for virtual machines by consuming physical storage only as needed, significantly reducing the cost of customer deployments.
• vStorage Linked Clone technology optimizes storage utilization by eliminating the duplicate storage of virtual machine data transparently to the virtual machine.

Capabilities to Automate and Streamline Key Storage Management Processes
vStorage will also enable VMware and its storage partners to automate manual handoffs and processes between the virtual environment and the storage infrastructure, delivering a seamless solution for the IT administrator.

• vStorage APIs for Site Recovery Manager provide customers with tight integration between VMware Site Recovery Manager and array-based replication, enabling customers to define a custom recovery process and automate the restart of their virtual machines after disasters without having to worry about correctly coordinating the virtual environment failover with storage replication failover.
• vStorage APIs for Consolidated Backup enable customers to automate and streamline non-disruptive virtual machine backups using standard backup software products.
• vStorage APIs for storage management expand upon these efforts with interfaces that enable integrated management of storage hardware platforms and the virtual environment through management tools from VMware and storage partners, eliminating the complex coordination and manual processes previously required to manage storage within a virtualized environment.

vStorage technologies enable VMware and its partners to bring the benefits of the VDC-OS to deployments of all sizes. They make it practical for even the smallest deployments to take advantage of virtualization and of storage partner technologies by reducing cost and complexity. They also provide larger deployments the ability to fully leverage their storage investments and storage expertise to build a simpler, optimized, and automated infrastructure through the seamless integration of their storage infrastructure with the VMware platform. The VMware Ready program, which currently provides certification of storage vendor hardware for VMware Infrastructure, will ensure that customers can confidently deploy storage hardware and storage virtual appliances that have been tested and validated for the VMware platform.